NOTE 40 ([p. 273])
CHINESE OFFICIAL ACCOUNTS OF WESTERN TRIBES
Several volumes of the official Provincial Annals of Yunnan are devoted to a most elaborate quasi-ethnological enquiry into the various tribal communities of that province. Unfortunately, the conscientious industry of the compilers coupled with their bland credulity and lack of critical training led them to fill their pages with a great deal of matter that is useless and misleading. The numbers and names of the tribes are quite unnecessarily multiplied, and there is hardly any attempt at classification or at the tracing of origins. Subdivisions of the same race are treated as entirely separate, and any similarities between them are either ignored or merely mentioned as unexplained facts. Yet it must be admitted that as descriptions of tribal customs and as store-houses of tradition and folk-lore the ethnological sections of the Annals are by no means to be despised. The T'ung Chih of Ssuch'uan is less satisfactory in this respect than that of Yunnan.
NOTE 41 ([p. 284])
THEORY OF INDIAN ORIGIN OF TRIBES
It seems quite clear that the Licchavis—or the great Vaggian or Vrijian clan-system to which they belonged and from which the Mauryans sprang—were neither Aryans nor Dravidians. In all probability they were of Kolarian or Munda race. The Kolarians seem to have entered India from the north-east—just as the Aryans afterwards entered it from the north-west—and extended themselves over vast areas from which they were subsequently driven by Dravidians and Aryans. They must have originally come from the countries that lay to the east, which we now know as Burma, China and Indo-China. They probably left many of their Kolarian kinsfolk behind them, and it may have been through keeping up communications with the latter that they were able to introduce into their old homes something of the new culture and civilisation that they acquired in their new homes in India. The Kolarian dialects are known to be akin to those of certain tribes in Burma, and so far as personal characteristics are concerned a description of the Kolarian tribes as they are known to-day in parts of Bengal would be applicable, word for word, to some of the peoples of Indo-China and Yunnan. "The Kolarian people," says Mr J. F. Hewitt, who lived among them, "may generally be described as gregarious, excitable, turbulent when roused, but generally peaceable and good-humoured. They are brave and adventurous, witty, and very fond of amusement, not given to work more than is necessary, and as a rule very careless of the future." (J.R.A.S., vol. xx. p. 330.) It must be remembered, however, that the Burmese people, to whom these words are also applicable, are now believed by the best authorities to have come from "the Mongolian countries north of Magadha." (Sir George Scott's Burma, p. 66.)
Many of the tribes of western China—some of the Lolos and Min-chia, for instance—are often described as possessing a type of features that is almost European; and Mr Kingsmill seems to derive from this fact some support of his theory of their Indian (Aryan) origin. "The distinctive colouring," he says, "closely approximates to the Aryan type of the Indian peninsula," etc. (J.R.A.S. (China Branch), vol. xxxv. p. 95.) But the Mauryans themselves, as we have seen, were not of Aryan origin. The Licchavis are referred to in Manu as one of the "base-born" castes for that very reason—in spite of the fact that they possessed great power and prestige and very wide influence. It seems very doubtful whether an Aryan emigration from India to China took place at any time. India always offered full scope for all Aryan energies; indeed we know that the Aryans by no means became so universally predominant, even in India, as one might gather from the early and wide extension of their language and religion. If there really is an Aryan element among the tribes of western China it would be curious to speculate on the possibility of its having come by a non-Indian route.
NOTE 42 ([p. 285])
CHANDRAGUPTA AND ASOKA
Chandragupta's reign probably began in 320 B.C., and his grandson Asoka ruled from ? 264 to ? 228. The chronology is not yet absolutely fixed, but I rely with some confidence on the dates recently selected by J. F. Fleet (J.R.A.S., October 1906, pp. 984 seq.) who, it may be remarked incidentally, assigns the death of the Buddha to B.C. 482.